[Luke]

I would pick ETFs over Mutual Funds. But it doesn’t matter much between the Total US Market and the S&P 500.

The returns won’t be different enough to really matter in the long run.

[Megan]

VOO is an S&P 500 ETF
VTSAX is a total market mutual fund

The S&P 500 is a wholely contained subset of the total market.

In this day and age I would do ETFs over mutual funds if all else is equal.

If he wants to add some diversification to his portfolio he might just add some mid and small cap funds to more closely approximate total market.

[Aparna]

VTSAX mutual fund translates to VTI as ETF, however, VOO has shown slightly better performance than VTI.

I prefer VOO.

[Randy]

Flip a coin. They are so similar because most of the 3000 stocks in the all stock index have little impact since they are dwarfed by the handful of largest stocks in that fund.

[Jimansy]

ETF’s are more portable and easier to transfer and have some tax advantages over mutual funds

[Bryce]

With vti you don’t have to run the risk of inclusion exclusion criteria like when Tesla was added to S&P 500, vti already had it

[Bill]

What type of account is it? Is the account a taxable investment account, or a tax deferred retirement account?

If its an investment account (taxable), you need to own VOO because an ETF is more tax efficient.

If the account is a Retirement account, it doesn’t really matter which one you own………. VOO is an ETF…… VTSAX is a mutual fund.

[Christopher]

VOO has a slightly lower tax liability than VTI in some cases (all voo dividends are qualified dividends, while vti has some unqualified dividends).

It’s a minor difference, but maybe worth knowing about if you’re doing fancy tax planning and investing outside of retirement accounts.

[Frank]

Almost no difference holding mostly the same stuff. Flip a coin.

There are now many funds that are virtually identical like this, and any of them will do as the large cap growth or blend allocation in a portfolio. Use VTI instead of VTSAX whenever available at no fees.

[Author]

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